Eye of the Storm
by beeftony
Summary: Azula helps Zuko with the finer points of lightning.


Zuko stood in the middle of the massive courtyard, the only one standing in an area meant to hold thousands. His eyes were closed and he concentrated on his breathing.

Slowly, he started moving. He brought his right arm upward, two fingers extended as he traced a circle in the air. He now focused not just on the breaths, but the energy they contained. It separated easily, coming apart faster the harder he concentrated. He brought his other arm around and thrust it forward, releasing the energies just as they crashed together.

A second later he was on his back, and there was smoke where he had just been standing. Sighing, he let his head drop to the stone.

"Failing as usual, Zu-Zu?"

Zuko opened his eyes and saw his sister standing over him. The royal garment she still wore suggested that she hadn't quite gone to bed yet. Groaning, he stood up. "What are you doing out here?"

"I could ask the same of you," she evaded, looking at her nails. "As it turns out I was investigating some loud noises I heard. But I guess my question's answered now. What were you trying to do?"

He groaned and lowered his head. "It seems like every member of this family can make lightning except me. You, Father, Uncle… you're all great firebenders. But I'm just the one who's always playing catch-up."

"You know, it's more fun when _I_ get to point out your flaws," Azula replied and began to circle him. "Listening to you degrade yourself is just boring."

Zuko turned around and glared. "Then why don't you leave?"

"Because, I want to help you," she answered in the suspiciously saccharine tone that she adopted whenever she was trying to manipulate someone. "After all, you've been feeling _so_ angry and confused ever since you got home. Want me to help you puzzle out why?"

"No thank you."

"Oh, but it'll really help, I promise. I can at least help you figure out how to make lightning."

Zuko considered that for a moment. His sister was clearly up to something if she was offering to help him like this. She never did things for anybody's interest save her own. That was something he'd learned the hard way over the last few months.

But, he considered, maybe he was being a little too paranoid? After all, if playing along afforded him an ability he'd been denied ever since his uncle tried to teach him earlier that year, wouldn't that be worth it? Even if she was working toward some ulterior motive, at least he'd be properly armed when she inevitably tried to turn it to her advantage.

"Alright," he said, crossing his arms. "Show me how."

"You start by breathing," she began, inhaling deeply to demonstrate. "Focus on the energy that's being taken into your body. Try and separate it."

"I had that part figured out before you got here," Zuko said impatiently. "Uncle already told me about the energies months ago. The same thing happened then. I tried to separate the energy but it just wound up exploding in my face."

"That does tend to happen to you a lot," she remarked, and he glared. "Relax, I'm just joking."

"It's not _funny_."

"Nothing ever is to you. Do you want my help or not?"

He shut up.

"Good. Now, the next part is very simple: you just move your arms like this…." She repeated same motions he had done earlier, only blue sparks trailed from her fingertips as she did so. She pointed her arm skyward, and lightning surged from her fingertips, illuminating the courtyard and bringing forth a wave of thunder. "…and let the lightning go." She stepped back and crossed her arms. "Now you try."

Zuko closed his eyes and breathed like before. He separated the energies as best he could, moving his arms in the same pattern as before. He thrust his arm forward and released the energy again….

…and promptly wound up on his back. He groaned.

"You know, you should be glad that didn't work," Azula commented, walking over to him. "You were pointing right at the servant's quarters."

Zuko covered his face with his hands.

"Come on, get up," she encouraged. "Let's try it again."

"I'm just going to _fail_ again!" he shouted, rocketing to his feet. "I've been trying this for hours! Every time I think I've got it, it just blows up and I don't know _why_!"

Azula just smirked at that. "You know," she said, tapping a nail against her chin, "you said something similar back on Ember Island. Only then you were just confused over how angry you were. I think the two problems might be related."

He crossed his arms. "How do you figure that?"

"You're having trouble making lightning because you're in emotional turmoil," she explained, starting to pace. "You couldn't figure out who you were angry at until we confronted you about it, and even then it didn't solve anything. You're frustrated with yourself because you're having second thoughts. That's why you've been talking to Uncle."

Zuko's eyes narrowed. "Is this another one of those things where you try and trick me into making a confession?"

"Of course not," she replied. "The guards in the tower confirmed it after I asked them."

He grit his teeth, and his hands turned into fists. "I warned them not to tell anybody."

"Oh, relax. The thing you're forgetting is that I've been at home longer than you, and they know what I would do to them if they lied to me. You should never try intimidating somebody unless you're certain they aren't loyal to somebody even worse."

"Alright," he said, relaxing only a little. "What do you want from me? If you're bringing this up to me it must mean you haven't told Father yet."

"I just want to make sure you're still on our side," she answered warmly, or at least pretended to. "You've been on your own for so long, Zuko. I just want to know where your loyalties lie."

"My loyalty will always be to the Fire Nation," he replied without hesitating. "I would have figured you'd trust that after I helped you conquer Ba Sing Se."

"Oh, I did, until I learned that you've been speaking with Uncle. What kind of things has he been telling you?"

"He hasn't talked to me at all," Zuko lied, not wanting to share the revelation he'd been exposed to a few nights earlier. "I've just been going in there and yelling at him. Telling him exactly what I thought of him."

Azula smiled wickedly. "And how did he respond?"

"He didn't. He just turned around and let me take it out on him."

"How typical of him. Well, I'm glad there's nothing to worry about." She turned around. "Good night, Zuko. And good luck with the lightning."

"Wait," he said before he could stop himself. Azula turned around.

"What is it?"

Zuko wanted to tell her not to mind, that he had forgotten, but instead he continued down a path he knew would lead to nowhere. "He did tell me one thing."

She raised an eyebrow. "And what was that?"

"Do you remember a few days ago, when I was asking you about what happened to Fire Lord Sozin?"

"Of course. You wanted to know what happened to him. You never did tell me why."

"I got a letter saying I needed to know what happened to my great-grandfather. Well, I did." Zuko ignored the voice inside him that was screaming for him to stop. He had already told her this much. If he stopped now she would get even more suspicious.

Azula looked skeptical. "How could you find out what happened if you already knew?"

"That's the thing," he answered. "Sozin wasn't our only great-grandfather. He was just our father's grandfather. Our mother's grandfather was Avatar Roku."

"Really?" she said, hardly reacting at all. Zuko knew from experience that such a response meant she was actually surprised. "I didn't know that."

"Neither did I. I went to the Dragon Bone Catacombs and dug up Sozin's last testament. I learned what happened to Roku."

"Which was what?" He knew this was a bad sign. Azula only became a passive listener if she was trying to absorb as much information as possible so that she could use it later. Still, he had gone too far to stop now.

"They used to be friends," he began. "Best friends. Sozin was even the Best Man at Roku's wedding. But things started to change between them and by the time they reached old age they were bitter enemies. They didn't speak to each other for twenty five years. Then the volcano on Roku's home island erupted, and Sozin went to help him."

"How very heartwarming," Azula deadpanned. "And what exactly were you supposed to learn from this?"

"I wasn't finished," he answered. "Sozin didn't save him. He figured that if Roku was gone, there would be nobody to stop him from taking over the world. So he left him there to die."

"Well, he was even more cunning than I thought," she said, smirking. "Willing to sacrifice his oldest friend like that. Don't you think it's great that we're descended from such a brilliant leader?"

Zuko glared. "That wasn't what I got from it," he replied. "Sozin betrayed his best friend so that he could launch some stupid invasion that ended up ruining the world, instead of improving it like he thought. He gave up his only chance at happiness because he was afraid he wouldn't be remembered. He died alone."

"Is _that_ what you think of our great-grandfather?" she responded, eyebrows raised. "I wonder how father would respond to that."

"Go ahead and tell him," he challenged, praying that she wouldn't.

"I think for now I'll just keep it our little secret," she replied, and inside he breathed a sigh of relief. "It'll mean more coming from you anyway."

Zuko said nothing.

"Of course, I _am_ a little worried if you're that disillusioned with the war. I'm starting to think Uncle has gotten to you."

"Maybe he has," Zuko replied, turning around. "But maybe that's not such a bad thing. He was a father to me when our real father banished me for three years. He stuck with me through everything. His only mistake was not joining me when we took down Ba Sing Se."

"Uncle has been nothing but a fat old tea-loving failure his entire life," Azula sneered, and he cringed. "I mean, he had a perfect chance to finish the job he abandoned at Ba Sing Se five years ago, and he chose to side with the Avatar. You were right to leave him behind."

He resisted the urge to say what he was thinking. It would have been obvious anyway. "Yeah…" he said after a moment. "I guess you're right."

"Of course I am. You really need to stop questioning yourself, Zuko. You did the right thing."

He didn't look at her. "Did I?" he asked quietly.

"_Yes_," she assured him, placing a hand on his shoulder. He shivered involuntarily at the gesture, shrugging off the hand almost immediately. Azula frowned.

"Azula…" he said after a moment, not looking at her. "Can I ask you something else?"

She rolled her eyes. "What is it _this_ time, brother?"

"How did Father act while I was gone? Did he miss me at all?"

"No," she answered, and his heart fell. "Father knew your banishment was for your own good. He knew it would make you a stronger person. And it has. You've proven yourself to be braver than he ever could have hoped."

"Except he only believes that because you lied to him," Zuko snapped, facing her. "Do you remember what he said to me three years ago, before he burned off half my _face_?"

"Why don't you enlighten me?" she deadpanned.

"He said that I would have to learn respect, and that suffering would be my teacher. Well I've suffered alright. But that's not what got him to accept me back home."

"Where are you going with this?" Azula's tone was suddenly a lot less comforting. Not that it had been to begin with.

"I guess the reason I've been having second thoughts is because I'm not sure how welcome I'd be if you hadn't lied to him," he answered, crossing his arms. "I'm starting to wonder if he ever really wanted me back at all."

"Of course he did, Zuko," she replied, assuming the false sincerity she had before. "But you kept disappointing him. I figured you needed a little help so that he would stop seeing you as a failure."

"You mean you gave me the credit so that on the off chance that the Avatar was alive, I'd get blamed instead of you."

She smirked. "Well, there is that too. Good thing he's not alive, then."

"Yeah," he said, meeting her gaze. "It's a real good thing." He looked away. "Still, I don't like that the only reason my father talks to me is because of something I didn't even do."

"That's not true, Zu-Zu. Without your help I never would have been able to hold the Avatar and his friend off in time for the Dai Li to complete the coup. Ba Sing Se would never have fallen. Your help was invaluable."

"But you're the one who killed him."

"Then why don't you tell that to Father, and see how he reacts?" Azula snapped, her practiced charm disappearing beneath anger. "Maybe this time he'll just kill you and spare himself the embarrassment of loosing you on the world again!"

Zuko crossed his arms and said nothing.

Slowly, the anger retreated from her features and Azula continued. "I didn't think so. Really, I don't understand why you're so upset about this. You should be happy that you're back home."

"And yet I'm not," he replied. "Maybe that's because this never was my home. I've never fit in with all the backstabbing and manipulating that goes on here. The only people who ever understood me were Mom and Uncle."

"And now one of them's dead and the other is rotting in a prison cell," she said coldly. "Because both of them turned their backs on their country. They're traitors, Zuko. And if you don't want to share their fate then you should stop idolizing them."

"I don't idolize them," he insisted. "But the only times I ever heard the words 'I love you' were from them. All Father's said is how proud he is of me, and that's over something you lied to him about!"

Azula rolled her eyes. "Do we need to keep revisiting that subject? I get it: you don't feel welcome here. But you've been away for so long, Zuko. You're still settling in. You'll warm up in time."

"And what if I don't?"

She shrugged. "Then I don't know what else to tell you."

"I have another theory on why I don't feel welcome."

"And what is that?"

"I talked to Uncle about what happened with Roku and Sozin," he confessed, no longer caring what his sister learned. He only hoped that she would understand his point, even though he knew she wouldn't. "He told me that good and evil are always at war inside me. That this whole time I've been trying to prove myself evil just to please my father. And the reason I've been failing is because I'm not. I don't fit in here because unlike you, I'm not willing to murder an innocent child just to get on my father's good side."

Azula said nothing. After several moments, she shook her head. "Zu-Zu," she sighed. "You've got to stop thinking in such childish terms."

"_Childish_?"

"Yes. You're stuck on a worldview that equates everything to black or white, good or evil, when not everything follows that pattern. Although I suppose having that face doesn't help." He rubbed his scar, and she smirked. "Everybody defines good and evil in their own way. It all depends on where you're standing."

Zuko glared and crossed his arms, but said nothing.

"For example, you call me evil but you fail to consider the motivation behind the things I do. I killed the Avatar because it was the only way to stop the imminent threat. You saw for yourself what he did at the North Pole when he summoned that super-powered glow. I was just trying to prevent the same thing from happening again. And he's not as 'innocent' as you might think. Neither are any of our enemies."

"What do you mean?"

"Long Feng, head of the Dai Li. Kidnapped, brainwashed, and manipulated the citizens of Ba Sing Se all while serving as the power behind the throne. He owed his allegiance to the Earth Kingdom. You call certain people from the Fire Nation evil but you never consider that _every_ nation has some less than reputable characters eating away at the apple."

Zuko looked away. "When I was traveling, I came across a small town that was being guarded by an Earth Kingdom detachment. Only they were extorting the citizens instead of protecting them. They were abusing their power, mostly over women and kids. I ended up driving them off. But I revealed that I was Fire Nation in the process, and the people ran me out of town in spite of the fact that I just saved them."

"You see? Nothing's that simple." She smirked. "Those people made the same mistake you're making; they only look at what you've done, not the motivation behind it. You call Father evil because he banished you and burned half your face but you don't ever think about _why_ he did it. He did it to make you a stronger person."

"He did it so he wouldn't have to see me again!" Zuko corrected. "He said I could come home after I found the Avatar, when nobody had seen him in a hundred years! He never expected me to return!"

"But you _did_ find the Avatar and now he's dead. You've been given a hero's welcome and Father is proud of you now. You have everything you ever wanted."

He looked away. "Everything I ever _thought_ I wanted. I'm even more miserable now than I was before I came back."

"And it's because you're still thinking that you have to fit into some arbitrary alignment," she replied. "You said that you were trying to prove yourself evil, but you know your motivations better than anybody. You were trying to prove to Father that you were worthy of his respect, and now you have. It isn't evil to try and earn a parent's love."

"Love isn't something you _earn_," Zuko challenged. "It's pretty much the only thing in this world that you can get for free without ever asking for it. And it _was_ evil to try and make me believe otherwise."

Azula sighed. "This is why you keep having trouble with lightning, Zu-Zu."

"What do you mean?"

"You can't stop thinking that everything has to fall into one of two categories. Lightning doesn't work like that. It involves positive and negative energies coming together and meeting somewhere in the middle. You have to draw from _both_ ends of the spectrum in order to master it. As long as you keep thinking in terms of good and evil, you're never going to be able to make lightning."

He said nothing.

"Zuko," she said softly, moving closer, "This war isn't about good and evil. It's about finishing what Fire Lord Sozin started a hundred years ago. It's about improving the world."

"You mean it's about finishing the work of a madman because we've sunk too much into the war to back out now," Zuko translated. "And we've already ruined the world. Sozin thought that by expanding his empire he'd be spreading the prosperity that the Fire Nation enjoyed, but in doing so he lost even that. Now the world hates the Fire Nation and we've put so much money into conquering our neighbors that we've forgotten to take care of our _own_ people. The only reason we're still fighting is because it's all we know."

Azula yawned. "As _fascinating_ as this conversation is, I should really be getting to bed. Got a long day tomorrow." She started walking away.

"You mean you're not going to tell Father?"

She turned around and smirked. "Please, Zuko. If I did that I'd be passing up a chance to watch you be miserable. And the best part is, I don't even have to do anything to you like when we were kids. You do it to yourself." She turned away from him and started walking again.

Zuko didn't even watch her leave. He turned around and started breathing, separating the energy that came in. Slowly, he moved his arms around in a circle, trying not to think of anything but the energies, and what happened when they crashed together. He shot his arm forward….

…and ended up on his back. Again.

He heard a chuckle. "You never know when to quit, do you, Zu-Zu?"

He waited until Azula was out of earshot to reply. "Neither do you."

* * *

Author's Notes:

Told you I'd have something new up quickly. This is the third story in my Insomnia Series, taking place sometime after "The Avatar and the Fire Lord." I wanted to take a break from the Gaang, so I focused on another plot point that I felt should have been explored more in the third season: Zuko's lightning.

While I enjoyed "Bitter Work," I did feel as though Iroh was leaving some things out regarding the energies, and the neutrality required to properly guide them. I decided to have Zuko talk to the show's other resident lightningbender both to hear it from another perspective and because I don't think Zuko and Azula had enough scenes together. Their dialogue is pure awesome.

This is my first time writing Azula, and I like the way it came out. Grey DeLisle and the writers really did a good job giving her a unique voice, and I don't think she'd be half as awesome without it. She's like a colder, more cunning version of Zhao. Her dialogue was extremely fun to write, and I'm looking forward to putting her in more of my stories.

If you think Zuko's being a major idiot here by revealing everything to Azula, well… let's just remember that he's always acted that way. I think the reason I gave at the end as to why Azula isn't going to reveal what she's learned to Ozai is perfectly in-character for her as well. She does love watching Zuko be miserable.

I could never figure out why the Fire Nation continued to fight even though it was clearly pointless, until I heard about something called the Sunk Costs fallacy. It's an error in reasoning that causes people to pass up buying a new car for 2,500 dollars when the repairs for their current car cost 3,000 dollars, because they've already spent 10,000 on repairs in the past. It's why people get ruined at the stock market and casinos, because they just don't know when to cut their losses. It's also one of the reasons the U.S. is still involved in the Iraq War. It's one of those things that you can only see when it's happening to someone else, because the human capacity for self-justification is limitless. So that's why I believe the Fire Nation is still involved in a pointless war. Because it happens all the time in real life.

Hrm. I just realized that the same basic rationale also applies to Zuko's actions in this story, specifically why he continues to reveal things to Azula even though he knows she'll use them for her nefarious purposes. I set that up completely by accident. It may also cover his actions on the show as well.

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed it! I'll try and update one of my main stories next time.


End file.
